Dr. Kane’s Voyage to the Polar Lands.

p. 23: Amos Bonsall, the last living survivor of the Kane expedition, was the officer of the brig ‘Advance’ who was in charge of making daguerreotypes for the expedition. Although the U.S. Navy had provided the ‘Advance’ with the apparatus for taking daguerreotypes of the arctic scenes which Bonsall and his companions were to encounter at unprecedented latitudes, the labors of Bonsall as the ship’s photographic chronicler came to a disastrous end in the year 1855. As Bonsall says…, the results of his work ‘were lost on our return. The box containing the daguerreotypes was put upon a sledge on the ice, and was carried away, together with the whole collection of Arctic birds, which had been prepared with great care for the Academy of Natural Science. This was an irreparable loss, and one to this day I have never ceased to regret.’ [See Rudolf Kersting, The White World, “After Fifty Years.”]